Crash Dummy
by BehrBeMine
Summary: The wedding was too perfect. Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, 'something' was me. [HOPEFULLY all formatting is fixed now.]
1. Part One

Apologies for the many re-uploads tonight… The site is being mean. As a result, I am splitting the story in half.

Title: Crash Dummy  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Word Count: 12, 436  
Disclaimer: I don't own these things. Sad. I feel poor.  
Feedback: Well I'm not going to beg because, let's face it, that's unattractive, and I already have lipstick on my teeth. But I'll throw a little party in my head if I'm given incentive.  
Pairing: Chris/Lorelai  
Rating: R  
Summary: "The wedding was too perfect. Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, 'something' was me."  
Beta: Nicole - - thanks ever so.  
Distribution: I'm sure you can tickle it out of me. And it's at my sites every night by curfew.  
Build-A-Fic Guidelines --  
Time Period: end of season six / 1982-'83 flashbacks  
Ickle Word: Schmoopy – (adj) – To be sweet and adorable and cute to the point where it creates an entirely new word to describe it.  
Random Object: a remote control  
Quotation: "If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?" -- Author Unknown  
Note: I put so much sweat and blood into this. So much '82-'83 research and time. I hope so much that it was worth it.  
Note: A few lyrics scattered from U2's album, 'October': 'I Threw a Brick Through a Window'. This is not a songfic. There is just one portion of the story where a few lyrics enhanced the emotion I was trying to evoke.  
Dedication: For my muse, who finally behaved. This time, anyway.

- -  
I.

She's pushing 40, though she doesn't look it. In fact, at times, she doesn't look a day over 25. But there's something in her eyes on this night as she enters Christopher's place, crossing her arms protectively over her breasts. There is age beneath her eyelids; pain, wisdom, and the evidence of a scarred soul. There are no bruises on the outside, but somehow he knows that figurative blood has been spilled.

She needs to not be alone right now. She needs someone to witness her breakdown. He obliges as he lets her step inside the doorway. And he is lost to her then, a part of her again. After all this time, he sees that look in her eyes, and he is willing, he is eager, he is ready to be hers again, for however long she'll have him. Sherry is gone, and a large pile of money can only give so much comfort when loneliness creeps up again. It's a woman's touch that is needed in these times. And what better woman to touch than this one?

He begins by reaching out for her elbow, innocently enough. It is not his intent to seduce her, but he'll have her if she's willing.

"Lor?" he prods gently.

Her head is shaking from side to side. "I-don't-want-to-talk-about-anything."

Something has reached in and grabbed a hold of her heart; that something is now squeezing the ever-beating life out of it, extinguishing it from existence. He can see it in the way her eyes are sinking into her skull, becoming larger as the rims become blackened, the color of bruises. Maybe it's not that she doesn't want to talk; maybe it's that she can't.

Silence is so deafening when you're standing next to a Gilmore girl. He thinks this to himself, and not for the first time. He can recall a time roughly 20 years ago when a sixteen year-old Lorelai stood before him with a pregnancy strip in her hand. _Read it_, was all she would say, and then she was quiet for so long while things sunk into his brain, making his skull much like hers was this day.

"Christopher..." she squeaks out just now. She's calling him by his full name. Something's definitely up.

He perks up from his reverie. "I'll sleep on the couch tonight. It's pretty comfy, once you get past the needing to be comfortable phase. You can take the bed."

She purses her lips and nods strangely, her eyes on the ground. He wants to see Lorelai's eyes, wants to look into them the way he hasn't been able to for the longest time.

"Lor?" he prompts again when it seems she won't be speaking anytime soon.

"The couch. You. Right." Monosyllabic Lorelai is a sight to behold. You'd think they'd show it at carnivals and charge money for the phenomenon. Lord knows Taylor would.

It's as if Chris can actually see a knife coming between them to cut the tension like a block of cheese. He looks at her as she looks at the ground, at her shoes, at the scuff marks on the ground from her shoes. The knife's blade cuts further until the tension separates and falls like sheets amidst them.

"Screw it," Lorelai finally mumbles before launching herself at Chris, wrapping her arms around his body and crushing it tightly to hers. She looks at his face in a scrutinizing way, close enough to examine every wrinkle that isn't there. Even when they are there, they'll look distinguished on him. After all, he is Christopher. She knows this, as she stares, seeming to contemplate her next move.

"I think," Chris whispers, as if by talking too loudly he could scare her away, "that you're too afraid to make the next move."

Challenged and already defeated enough, Lorelai feels a lone tear escape from her left eye. She can literally feel the mascara smear as she leans in to capture Chris' bottom lip between her own. Her lips tremble against his as she continues the kiss, pulling at his lips with the gentle ease of one who has been a lover of him many a time. She knows him. She knows how he likes to be kissed. She knows how to read the way he kisses her back.

II.

If she had known that the year 1982 would bring her last summer free of the tummy and the baby that would morph into a new life, she may have searched harder for the answers that still linger two centuries since. Lorelai's priorities went from "Is it fabulous?" to "Is it necessary?", then were downgraded further to "Can I live without it?" Survival, rather than enjoyment, became the key when her body was transformed into a locket which would open to reveal another human being.

Lorelai picked at the food on her plate with its expensive new design. She tried not to absolutely zero in on the perks of being a part of a family whose only time spent together just had to be for dinner, even on Friday nights. Drag. She sighed, and purposefully slouched in her chair, contemplating doing the "Wow, I'm stifled -- I mean, stuffed" excuse thing again and running out before purchasing guard dogs became a topic of interest again. Dogs that would keep nothing out, but would rather only serve to keep Lorelai _in_ at all times.

She wasn't so much nervous as annoyed at the thought of how many Scooby Snacks it would take to buy the guards' cooperation.

"Sit up straight, Lorelai." Hence Emily was given the patented stare that she had received from her daughter since the very first time she placed her in one of those dresses that are meant to be seen but not touched; worn but not worn out. Their skirts were the best ones for spinning, and yet they were to belong only to a mannequin version of a child behind glass.

Tiny carrots lined up for a parade around Lorelai's plate as her father brought up a new topic. Something about his new co-worker's business travels taking him on travels where he was able to learn in a more first-hand way about the depths of the holocaust.

Emily perked up at this. "Ah, I remember when Melissa Loman's father used to recall his time spent in Germany during Hitler's reign. After being near so many blasts, it's no wonder the man's hearing was never the same."

"God, you're old."

"What was that you muttered under your breath?" Emily snapped.

"You're old enough to remember people remembering things like that!"

"Your room. Now." Emily even pointed in case Lorelai had sudden amnesia and needed directions.

"Old!" Lorelai spat out.

"Straight upstairs, young lady. There will be no dinner for you."

"But then there will be no urge to regurgitate."

"What are you saying? Are you bulimic? You do look thin."

"No, Mom. I just hate the 'food' we eat here."

"Perhaps some time without it will make you a little more grateful," Richard put in gruffly.

"Don't call me ungrateful." Lorelai stabbed an accusatory finger at the air. "I'm leaving the room, aren't I? There's something we can all be grateful for! ...Enjoy your Cornish hen's barf."

"I heard that," Emily said dryly, beyond irritated with these teenage antics.

Voiced Lorelai, while walking away: "That's because I said it out loud."

III.

Summer midnights were the best. Tasteless dress discarded, Lorelai would climb down the drain pipe in jeans that hugged her hips deliciously, the big bangs hair sprayed on so that not even a windshield wiper could disturb their shape. She made jabs at '80's fashion while being a part of it, tying the left side of her pink polka-dotted shirt into a knot to off-set any sense of centering in her outfit. She loved that she looked atrocious. She took pictures, especially when wearing that "confused unicorn" ponytail on the side of her head.

Upon reaching the ground, off she'd sprint to Chris' awaiting vehicle, and away they'd venture to cause some sort of damage to somebody's brain. Most likely each other's.

She stopped before him this day, hands on her hips, except for the left hand, which grasped the knot that hid her hip underneath it. "Uh, Chris? I think your car went through some sort of identity crisis."

Christopher beamed at her, revving the engine of his new motorcycle. "You like it? I'm gonna call her Moneybags."

"Hmm. Well, I think Moneybags is going to ruin my hair wherever we go."

"Please. A hurricane couldn't bring damage to your hair. I've tried smashing those bangs, Lor, and they just pop back relentlessly, like a slinky."

"First of all, major cool points for comparing my hair to the God of all toys without batteries. Secondly, if we crash and burn -- "

"We won't -- "

" -- and skid along the road until only one side of my face is recognizable anymore, you must make my skinned off side look presentable again using Moneybags' shiny parts before anyone in society can see me again."

"Cool, my own robochick," Chris said thoughtfully. "But you'll have to pay me back for the parts you stole, once you're blinking and eating solid foods again."

Lorelai's throat made a disgusted sound that was something close to a forced cough. "I make no promises. And even when I do, I cross my fingers behind my back."

"You're such a child. And, by the way, you haven't even bothered to ask exactly what she is."

"A safety hazard record in the making?"

Chris ignored her comment and ran his fingers along its smooth handlebars. "It's a Honda Shadow 750, babe. Wait till you hear her purr."

"She'd better not take my place there. My cat impersonations are uncanny, even to cats."

Chris patted the limited space on the seat behind him. "So you coming for a ride or not? Time's a-ticking. You know how your mother starts randomly popping in to your bedroom to make sure you're there around three. All your jabbering's made it half past twelve."

Lorelai approached the vehicle, a kind that she had never ridden before, and placed a leg over it so that she was straddling it completely. "Christopher, you're the child. If I didn't 'jabber', we'd have no conversation at all. All that would come out of your mouth would be, 'Hey. What's happening? Oh. I don't do the conversation thing.'" She began adjusting herself on the seat. "Okay, have to say, before take-off -- this? Is the most uncomfortable seat I've ever sat in."

"You're such a child," Chris teased again. "Wrap your arms around my waist. But don't get frisky, I need to concentrate."

Sighing, Lorelai did as she was told. "You really take the fun out of everything." Barely had she clasped her hands together, hooking her arms securely, than Chris stepped on the gas, and they were off.

Lorelai screamed, wordlessly, and then she screamed his name. She couldn't decide if it was out of fright or outrage or because of the thrill that chased the warmth from her veins and left adrenaline in its wake. So much speed was gathered so quickly, and it was nothing like being in a car, or on a bike. A motorcycle was death and danger, like a noose with her name on it at dawn. It was speed that pulled the skin on her face taut, and brought tears to her eyes that escaped from the outer corners of her lids to be whisked away into the air they so briefly encountered and then left behind.

It was the kind of thrill that was slamming doors in her parents' faces, tearing itchy party dresses to smithereens, escaping down the drain pipe every midnight that summer without fail. To vocalize the word _motorcycle_ was to give desired rebellion a name. She knew that now. Clasping her fingers more intricately around Chris' waist, she held on tighter.

IV.

It doesn't take long to find Christopher's bed. History shows that it never did take them long to find a suitable place to copulate: cramped cars, school bathrooms, the janitor's closet, her parents' balcony. Whether they were putting on a show for people across the street with buckets of popcorn between their knees was no concern. Always the concerns of life were tossed away with his tie and her bra. They became so lost in one another, having known each other a lifetime. Having watched the candle's flame grow and flicker.

It was a trick candle, Lorelai now realizes. One that could be blown out, lingering only in tendrils of smoke. And yet once her back was turned, the flame could reignite. It did reignite. Time after endless time. Maybe that was why she was here of all places, throwing things away along with her clothes and those nonchalant concerns. Throwing away what she and Luke had, an engagement that was stuck in time, as if held by static cling wrap, never moving anywhere. She was too afraid to watch it move backward, and so she had to leave before that could happen, knowing that the forward steps would never come.

They'd never come.

Lorelai stands, naked, watching Chris remove his boxers and socks. She flexes and unflexes her hands at her sides, straining to recall a time before when she has been this uncomfortable. She purses her lips, knowing that never before has she known an action was so blatantly wrong, and gone through with it, anyway. She releases the suction of her lips on each other, and feels for her hair as if it is a foreign thing. She realizes that she is standing on train tracks. She isn't moving away; she isn't trying to budge. She is begging that train to crash into her and smash her to pieces.

Pieces that would litter the carpet of Christopher's elegant bedroom, scattering as they decayed with time. Maybe if she was only pieces, she wouldn't be the hollow shell standing here right now, missing unfashionable baseball caps and the soreness of rubbing delicate skin against eternal stubble. Maybe the sting of the ultimatum would disappear as if it weren't this gigantic thing, like a black hole set against all four walls of every room, pulling, wanting to suck her into being less than Luke's main priority. So far less that the place she holds with him is worth nothing. Nothing, if she can't have it all.

He wants more time; now he can have all the time in the world.

"Lor?" Chris' voice comes to her as if from far away. She realizes that she's touching her hair again, looping strands of it around her fingers absent-mindedly as though she's developing a habit of it, like people who chew their nails. She drops her hand immediately, picturing the stubby fingers of those kinds of people, and the way they can't even scratch; she doesn't want to go bald. She clears her throat and meets Chris' eyes from where he stands across the room, giving him her attention.

He takes timid steps toward her, insecurities alive in his eyes, his mouth set in no shape in particular. It's as if he can't choose what kind of expression his face is supposed to be wearing.

She wonders when he became so afraid of displeasing her. When he reaches the halfway point between them, something within her snaps and she rushes forward, wrapping her arms around his neck and capturing his lips, kissing him hungrily. As he kisses her back, his arms encircling her, she searches within his mouth for the answers she's seeking to questions she hasn't vocalized. She stabs her tongue in through his teeth, digging deeper, an archaeologist with the desperation of a deadline.

Chris does nothing to tame her intensity, his fire ablaze, so hot that it's turning from orange to blue. Awkwardly as they kiss, he steers them to the bed, and he trips over the side of the bed frame, sending them both flying down to the mattress. When Lorelai lands on top of him with a thud, her lips are torn away, and her eyes pop open.

He groans at the way the spell's broken when an object digs into his back. He reaches behind his body to reveal the stereo remote from the living room. Gigi loves to hide the things, loves to make Daddy "mad".

As he tosses it aside, Lorelai stares at him, wide-eyed. After a beat, she crawls over him to take her place in the bed. She usually sleeps on the right side of the bed, but tonight, she chooses the left side on purpose. Getting situated, she cups Chris' chin in her hand and draws it towards her, as his body follows suit. Ending up in a push-up position above her, he is very aware of the way that her eyes have not left the depths of his since opening. Each time he blinks, he expects to see her gaze shift, but it's riveted, and now she is swallowing something that he hopes is not her pride.

He lowers himself to her, chest upon chest, his nipples hardening as one of them brushes directly against one of hers. He sighs with happiness, thankful that Gigi has gone to bed on time this evening, and then begins kissing Lorelai again.

Lorelai absorbs Chris' sigh, and relaxes her body, her chest deflating towards the mattress. As their lips meet, she closes her eyes and thinks of anything but what is worth thinking about.

V.

"You never could stand still when you were a child, I don't know what sort of amnesia overcame me to cause me to think you'd be able to do so now," Emily whined, acting as if the seamstress wasn't in the room. It never failed to be interesting how easily she labeled certain people with insignificance.

"It's okay, Mom," said Lorelai, moving on purpose this time. "You're probably just going senile."

Emily sighed with impatience. "Lorelai, someday you're going to grow up to understand what things are important, and you're going to have a child who turns out to be just like you."

"God, that would be cool." Lorelai stared dreamily at the ceiling, imagining it. A mini version of her. "It would be like playing Barbies, only the Barbies would be us."

"You might as well give up," Emily told the seamstress not five minutes later. "Your efforts were good ones, but there is no hemming a skirt evenly if it is continually pulled up and down."

"Does that mean I can take this thing off?" Lorelai asked, her voice pleading and hopeful.

"Yes, take it off. Walk all over the skirt until you trip yourself at my dear friend Lacy's wedding this weekend. Just don't be surprised if I turn away as if I don't know you."

"If only..." Lorelai had that dreamy tone again. She yanked the dress off right in front of her mother, just to embarrass the woman with the exposed skin of her belly between bra and panties. "So I can go now?" She pulled on the sexiest top her mother would allow. "We're done with the 'fitting' thing?"

"Go," Emily said, defeated, with a flick of her wrist and a hand to her forehead. "Really," she remarked, her voice given new strength as Lorelai bounded toward the large dressing room's door, "I marvel at how you get in and out of jeans that tight. You'd think they were painted on."

"Is that your way of saying I'm allowed to decorate my jeans with paint?"

"Good lord. Go, Lorelai. Go now."

Giddy, Lorelai showed little manners as she raced through the formal dress shop, looking for the entrance.

"Did you find what you were looking for, miss?" asked a salesman with a tasteful tie and a gentle voice.

"Not even, I found my mother," she said, and that was all she explained before pushing her way through the main door and out into the sunshine. She immediately headed toward the seediest bar in Hartford, which was where she and Chris always went when one was looking for the other. It was a great place to hang out, in front of the doors with the sleazy figures of nude females painted onto the small pieces of glass that allowed one to see into the bar just enough to realize they weren't seeing anything. She loved that it was forbidden, so forbidden that even when she was of age, she'd probably never enter it. Lorelai loved this place during the daytime, when it was closed due to the appearance of the sun, for what it would do to her parents' reputation, precious as it was, if she were to be seen there by anyone deemed important.

The way she scoffed at the uptight restrictions of privileged society was no hidden thing.

Lorelai reached the bar, expecting to find it lonely without a companion lounging by its doors. Instead, she found Megan Reily sitting, knees pulled up to her chest. Lorelai narrowed her eyes, for the girl's back was touching her territory. Making with the happy voice as she approached, she said, "Megan."

The girl looked up. "Hey, Lorelai."

Lorelai looked around a bit as if someone were watching. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting baked by this sun."

"Yeah, it's scorching, all right. Hey, you know, Megan..." Lorelai bent her knees and sat cautiously beside Megan on the cement. "Not to be like a total bitch, but you are so sitting on my part of the sidewalk."

"Ohhh." Megan blinked. "And see, I just didn't know that because I didn't see your name where I placed my butt."

"It's written in invisible ink. Though it glows in the dark. It's sort of nocturnal that way."

Megan ran a hand over her bangs that had a wispy quality that Lorelai had always envied and couldn't achieve, seeming to contemplate those words. Megan fingered her long strands which were so white Lorelai wondered often if she had milked a few albinos or been scared shitless so many times that all of the color ran screaming out.

"I'm pretty comfortable here," Megan finally said. "And even if your name really is there, I don't mind sitting on it."

Lorelai huffed and folded her arms across her breasts. "Come on, Megan. Remember the time I paid the old homeless guy to buy you cigarettes when you chain-smoked your weekly ration? Tell me you didn't love me for that. You missed out on so many lecture type words from the parental units."

Sincerity did not touch the smile on Megan's face. "They found out."

"Ugh. Well. Megan." Lorelai's voice was taking on a whining note. "This space is mine. I called it like a year ago. Called it like claimed it and even called it Bon Jovi."

"You're telling me I'm sitting on Bon Jovi as incentive for me to move?"

"Don't get attached. He likes being sat on by my butt better than other butts."

"How do you know?" Megan shot.

"He told me," Lorelai backfired.

"How could he tell you if you were sitting on him?"

"I... gweh..."

Lorelai was about to call a time out on an argument, perhaps for the first time in her whole life history, when strong arms snaked around her waist from behind. "Hmm," she sighed contentedly into the smell of Christopher as he nuzzled the back of her ear with his nose. "You're good at that..."

"You looked like you needed a little calming down," he soothed, rocking her upper body with his arms. He glanced up. "Hey, Megan. How's it hanging?"

"We were talking about butts," she so delicately informed him.

Chris gave a manly chuckle, inhaling the scent of Lorelai's shampoo in the stray tendrils that fell from her ponytail to frame her face. "I hope you left mine out of it."

"You scared it couldn't survive the scrutiny?" Lorelai prodded.

"When the scrutiny's coming from you two? It's definitely good to be afraid."

Megan slowly stood from where she was sitting on the invisible marked territory. "I think we were just about to decide who has the better butt between Lorelai and me." She was so informative, all of the time. She was someone who Lorelai didn't miss when they failed to get together in the summertime.

Lorelai could feel something growing in size from where Chris was pressed against her from behind. Unconsciously, his grip on her waist tightened a little, squeezing to claim. Lorelai's eyes went wild with excitement and bewilderment, her mouth forming an ecstatic _wow_ as Chris' reaction sunk in.

Chris was picturing the way Lorelai's behind had looked in those favorite jeans of hers as he had walked up to the two girls just moments before. He closed his eyes at the thought, picturing its toned shape, and the way the fabric hugged her below the waist, from hips to cheeks, making him want to touch her there, now. Always. A quiet groan escaped him that he couldn't withhold as he pressed himself into that tiny butt of hers.

Lorelai giggled self consciously, and whirled around until she was facing her beau. Though she was looking at him, her words were directed at Megan: "Let's not pull him into this." The blush in her cheeks was deliciously pink as she took Chris' hand and started leading him down the street.

Megan quickly followed. "So now that I stopped suffocating your Bon Jovi, can we be friends again?"

"Mmm..." Lorelai tilted her head this way and that as Chris put his arm around her shoulders. "What will I get out of it?" she teased.

"You get to hang with the coolest chick this side of town."

"Really? My clone's around? Where?"

When Chris finished forcing his laughter to subdue itself, he asked, "So how's it going with you and Mickey, Megan? Lorelai here like so misses asking about M&M." He raised his voice to an unnatural pitch to make extra fun.

"Mock me, will you. You'll pay for that," Lorelai told him darkly, conjuring storms in her eyes.

"Actually, Mike and I are giving it another shot," Megan said, the excitement in her voice hiding behind caution.

"Oh my God, yay!" piped in Lorelai. "He's your boyfriend again. Your boyfriend for the second time. Your boyfriend squared." She gave Chris a pointed look. "See? I can already apply math to my everyday life. I think I've stuffed enough of that crap into my brain."

"Hey, at least math always has the same answer. You and your 'More English! More! There must be more words!' kick is the ridiculous thing. I speak the language as fluently as I'll ever care to, okay?"

"Wow," remarked Megan, "you both actually do have one interest in our school. That's enough to blow all our minds."

"Whose minds?" asked Chris.

"Everyone at Chilton, college counselors, society..."

"It is so nice to know we're on so many peoples' minds." Lorelai added a smile to her sarcasm and turned her face in toward Chris' t-shirt covered chest, inhaling his new manly aftershave.

The three continued to walk aimlessly for a few steps leaving the air unpolluted with the abuse of the English language. Certainly, though, it couldn't last.

"So, how long have you two been a couple?" Megan pried, having noticed the touching and the smelling. The arms, hands, interlocking everywhere.

"We're a couple?" Lorelai looked at Chris, feigning shock. "Honey, you really have to tell me these things."

Chris shrugged. "I assumed you knew."

"You also assumed Megadeth was gonna kick Metallica's ass."

"Says the girl who wants to stalk The Bangers."

Lorelai's eyes closed in mild impatience. "The _Bangles_. As my apparent other half, I think you should know me better."

"Looks like we're real bad at this 'couple' thing," Chris "admitted", loving the games he played with Lorelai, for she was the only person he knew above the age of seven who still would play such games so unabashedly.

"I guess we'd better stop it, then, before things get out of hand."

Megan looked on, perplexed. She knew them, but nobody really _knew_ Lorelai Gilmore until they got close enough to see these types of insane intricacies.

"All right," Chris said. "Megan, Lorelai and I are no longer a couple." He gave himself a visible tremor as though a fat giant snake were moving down through his body. "Glad we got that out in the open."

"Okay, so we're just friends," Lorelai "established", having let go of Chris' hand and setting it free. Noticing the absence of the weight of his arm on her shoulders, she continued, "But I still want the benefits: sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll."

Chris' schmoopy smile then was the only genuine piece of conversation they'd shared all day. "You got it, baby."

VI.

Chris' body is heavier over hers than it used to be. She remembers these things. Has always remembered. Where she is hollow, he is whole, his muscle pressing in to the vacant spots left by the skin stretched taut over her bones. It's all she feels like in this moment: a bag of bones, once so milky white, and now fading into the grey of oblivion. The oblivion that claims lost souls and forgotten memories. Those who are lost and never find the right path.

She can feel the bones in her mouth, lined up together as her teeth. She clenches them as Chris massages the knots in her body. He has an idea of how they got there; what he doesn't know is that they're not going away.

VII.

Some nights when the clock struck twelve, Chris would climb up the drain pipe, rather than call Lorelai down. They'd lay side-by-side on her bed with its frilly unstained comforter that had to be upgraded to a new one every time she did make a stain. She didn't even pretend to care about choosing the new patterns anymore. The way she saw it, a couple more grueling years of high school, and then she was home free. She was just biding her time until she could leave. When she could celebrate, Emily could celebrate, and Richard could remain as detached about the entire thing as ever he seemed.

When debating which of Snow White's elves had the most sex appeal weirded Chris out to the point of getting on his nerves, he rolled onto his side, supporting his head with his bent arm. "Please tell me there are other things you've thought of today."

Lorelai shrugged and then duplicated his position, so that they could look one another in the eye as they spoke of things that were oh-so-important. "I was walking by the electronics store on 15th the other day and the TV in the window was playing an episode of 'Cheers'. I was thinking like... the values of shows like that are so lost on people like us. People who find sitting down as a family and watching TV together uncomfortable, and more like a waste of time."

Her eyes found other areas of her room to explore as she formulated the rest of what she was going to say. "I don't think I've ever watched anything other than the news with my parents. That 'Cheers' song, _Where everybody knows your name_... It's true, you know."

"Oh, very," Chris immediately agreed. "People always know my name."

"As long as they've had enough time to rehearse it before the obligatory birthday party."

Chris smiled. "'Let's see, I give the envelope of money to the tall girl standing next to Jack's latest divorcee...'"

"The system never fails," was Lorelai's conclusion. "Except when it does."

What she loved about Chris was that he nodded, and he understood. She made sense to him in ways that sometimes she couldn't even make sense of.

"You ever actually watched an episode of 'Cheers'?" Chris asked her.

"Ha. No. Way too boring for me."

"That's right. I should have known. You're more into the crap they'll be selling reruns of on videotapes for $1.99 in six months flat. But you just have to watch it, because a title like 'That's Incredible!' just screams 'dear God watch me'. I think they must use a title like that hoping for some kind of validation. Those poor suckers are going to be waiting a long time."

Lorelai lunged at the chance to defend her show. "People _died_ to entertain, okay?"

"No, I think they died because they were so stupid they decided to sit in a box for six hours with no air."

"You're just jealous that your death won't be as fondly remembered."

"By the fifteen people who watched the box thing?"

Lorelai furrowed her brows. "...Yes."

"Well, I may need five minutes, but I think I can come up with something just as 'memorable'."

"Like walking a tight-rope on stilts?"

Chris paused. "How about you walk a tight-rope in high heels, and then we'll talk?"

"Sorry, bucko. My fantabulously glorious death is already in the scripting process. It's going to blow your mind. And don't you dare try to take a peek."

Chris reached over in a flash to grab a hold of Lorelai in her off-the-shoulders pink top, and pull her to him. "Not even a little peek?" he pried, touching his lips to hers that eagerly waited. He lost his focus for a moment in the kiss that served to drown him and all of his senses, but upon rising for air, he remembered his mission. Project Tickle began, as he found the spots on her body that she knowingly tried to keep hidden from him. But there were only so many bases she could cover, and still things were left vulnerable somewhere. His fingers tapped and hooked in a frenzied way on the soles of her feet. Then he grabbed a hold of her side when kicked away and his ticklish fingers wouldn't let go, not even when the giggles and her cries of, "Stop it! Stop it!" rose from his ears to the ceiling. "Not even a little wibble peek?" he pleaded.

"No! Stooooooop! My parents are just downstaaaaaaaairs!"

With that final warning, his fingers relaxed, wrapping around her side tenderly, and holding her body to him. He buried his nose in her severely messed up hair, inhaling the scent of her that always helped him to relax and keep going when life was too much. Within seconds, he was calm, and her breathing had slowed down close to a normal rate again.

"How about we stop talking about you and death in the same sentence?" he whispered.

They unfolded from one another at the reality of that, and took their original positions, on separate parts of the mattress, hands near but not touching, eyes to the ceiling, contemplating the sky that was somewhere above.

Lorelai, as usual, was the one to break the silence when it had stretched itself thin. And always her ice breakers were monumental, the very thing that those who failed to be scholars must have pondered from time to time.

"What happens during the second you lose in a sneeze?"

- -  
Continued in next chapter.


	2. Part Two

Here's the second half, since it wouldn't show up in its entirety as one part.

Title: Crash Dummy  
Author: BehrBeMine  
Disclaimer: I don't own these things. Sad. I feel poor.  
Pairing: Chris/Lorelai  
Rating: R  
Summary: "The wedding was too perfect. Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, 'something' was me."

- -  
VIII.

Chris is ready for full-on sexual contact now, covering her again, whispering things in her ear, like he used to. Lorelai realizes, not for the first time, how many ways in which despite all recent changes he's stayed the same. When it comes to her.

She doesn't hear what he whispers; whether they're words or just vowels rounding out consonants. They've have no meaning, as she is numb, and her senses are not working. She is not feeling things like she should be, like she always has. He is touching her breasts in the way he learned long ago she favors, and it's as if she has floated out of her body, and is seeing this happening to someone else with her face. Her face made of decaying stone.

"If anything's unbreakable, it's this," Lorelai said, as she slid into the passenger seat of Chris' red hot sports car. "God, I love this car," she admitted as he changed gears and they started rolling away from her sleeping house. "And I love that I found the exact color nail polish so that my fingers and toes can match the paint. Wicked Red, oh yeah."

She liked the name of it because she felt the night would be a _wicked_ one to remember whenever she looked at that bottle of red nail polish to match his car.

The wind blew through her long strands, accentuating the curls as they swarmed about her face in a lovely way. "So where are we going?" she asked.

She has no idea where she's headed. With this escapade, with tomorrow, with the rest of her life. Chris' kisses are full of that fire that burns and consumes her, and she feels wrapped in its heat, unbearably so, as if the walls are closing in and she's suddenly become claustrophobic. There is perspiration over her numbness now, and the bed frame is creaking as Chris takes his mouth on a journey from her breasts down to her core, where he lingers, smoothing the course hair with his tongue, making it seem as though he's bathing a cat.

"Geeze, it got wet so fast," Chris complained, rolling up his window against the pounding rain. "This is the greatest view outside of Lookout Point, I swear. If only you could see it past the zillion drops..."

"Lookout Point is so cliché, anyway. Who wants to be someplace where everyone's going to be rivaling for who's got the best lungs?"

Chris smiled at her optimism, and handed her the bottle of vodka. Swig, and swig, and swig. He took out his flask, savoring every gulp with the sour lemon face, trying to fight it every time. He laughed at Lorelai's coughs. They were acting as though they'd never done this kind of thing before.

She's never experienced this sort of numbness. Sex has always been about the intensity of feeling, the idea of it almost being too much to feel all at once. The best times were the times when she feared she might split right in half. She longs for that now, thinking that if she could give half of herself to Luke, it would be equal to what he's been giving her. And she could be happy because that would only be half of her life. The other half could stay with Christopher, if she could ever find a way out of this numbness. If the sensation of pins and needles ever returns to her fingers and toes. She thinks about it. She thinks.

Chris had never seen such a little woman put away so much vodka with no chaser. The whiskey in his throat had become an eternal burn. He'd damn well coated himself in it. And now all of the words he said and heard were slurred greatly. Lorelai was making declarations, like she always did, especially when she had no idea what she was talking about.

"Life... is a fantastic thing when you're young. When you're really young." As if she knew anything otherwise.

Someone is speaking and before the sound is over, Chris realizes it is coming from him. "Yeah, before your trust account goes bankrupt thanks to your drunken daddy and you're losing grey hairs."

"They have pills for that, you know." Lorelai swigged again from the enormous bottle in her hands. Chris wondered if the delicate bones in her wrists might snap if she kept relying on their strength that way. The pout of her lip looked so saddeningly sober. "And it hurts that growing up... growing up means growing away from who you used to be."

"Me?" asked Chris, confused.

"Who **you** used to be." Lorelai stabbed his chest with her pointer finger, and then tapped that same finger on her own forehead several times.

"Away from who we used to be." Chris digested this as he swished some of Lorelai's vodka in his mouth.

"Away! There's no better place to be than away. _Awayawayaway_." Lorelai looked around with a frown, searching for what was giving her voice that echo effect. She saw nothing but the inner confines of Chris' car.

Chris was staring at her when she finally met his eyes again. "It scares me, you know. The way you can tell me it's okay and then suddenly it is. You're amazing."

"God you're drunk," was her diagnosis.

"Yes, that too."

Lorelai grabs a hold of Chris' naked shoulders, her palms sliding around on the sweat already gathered there from his intense petting of her. The petting in which she hardly gave a response other than to stare at him, at the walls around them, at the ceiling, at her bared breasts, confusion and nothing else conquering the features on her face.

"I... can't feel you," she says, her lips seeming chapped as she parts them, her mouth gone dry.

He moves up her body. "Just use your hands," he whispers tenderly, kissing them one at a time, and placing them near his buttocks. Her hands slide again with the sweat already there.

She gives up, gives her body to him. Lets him do what he's there to do.

"Don't give up yet, don't you dare," Chris insisted, feeling like a coach. "Come on, a few more heavy swigs, and that baby's empty. You can do it, just chug."

Lorelai blocked her eyes with one hand as if she were staring into direct sunlight. "I don't wan'u," she said in a drunken whine. "It doesn't taste anymore."

"It could never taste, Lor. It doesn't have a tongue."

"It doesn't taste _good_."

"All right. Gimme it." Chris seized hold of the bottle, and snapped his head back so that it was parallel with the floor and the ceiling. Bringing the bottle to his lips, he chugged. Swig and swig and swig. And then it was done. The alcohol was gone. Absorbed into two underage individuals who knew they should know better, but couldn't possibly care less. Without the booze, they were left alone, just the two of them, companionless but for each other.

He looked at her. She was looking for something else.

"I forgot music," he admitted sheepishly.

"That's because we decided your music sucks," Lorelai explained bluntly, coming back up to a sitting position with a tape in her hands. "Well, not so much we decided as I've told you repeatedly. So, my music it is."

She inserted U2's 'October' into the car's cassette player. "Should be all cued up," she explained. "If it's not, then the hell with it, I don't know how to work those damn buttons right now. Chris, I can't see straight. You're kind of like leaning right no matter what you do."

"You say I'm leaning the right way?" he asked, pushing _play_ and maneuvering himself into the backseat. "Sounds like I'm not as lost as I feel."

_I was talking, I was talking to myself, somebody else._

Lorelai somehow managed to stumble her way into the backseat as well, grumbling about how roomy it was not until she tripped trying to get her last foot through and fell on top of Chris. Then she laughed. And it was the most beautiful sound.

At least one of them is enjoying this. Lorelai knows this is so. She can tell by the pitch of Chris' voice as he shouts out while he's in-and-out of her body. She feels like a full service gas pump, being filled, emptied, and refilled without payment or compensation of any kind. She feels nothing but the uselessness of her presence being there at all.

His hands over her body are like sprinkles of rain.

Rain pelted the hood of the car as percussion to accompany the lyrics that soothed in their beat, if not their language.

_Talk, talk, talking.  
I couldn't hear a word,  
A word you said._

The farthest they'd gone is second base, and Chris was fully aware of this after her top was pulled off, her bra unsnapped. This area he had conquered, and conquered well. He hugged her warm breasts to his face, loving their female quality, their perkiness, the softness of them against his cheek.

The alcohol in her belly started to make a ruckus, like there was a food fight going on in there. Lorelai giggled at the sound of it, and her laughter's volume was luminous in Chris' ears that rested against her skin. He felt so close to her then, as if he was knowing her even on the inside. All parts of her were open for him to claim.

His tongue and lips claim her as his own, wet, hot, and sticky. All she feels is the sweat, and nothing more. Her mind is screaming so many things, obscenities, Luke's final words, the build-up to the ultimatum, April, April, April.

_I said there was no other,  
Way out of here.  
I got to get out._

Her body strains beneath the mental baggage that is weighing her down. As she arches, Chris takes that as incentive to go harder and faster. She falls to the mattress, heavy as a soaked blanket. And she wants, more than to feel, to forget. To think of anything else. She bans all that plagues her from entering her skull, expelling thoughts as if with a baseball bat made of steel. There is no Luke. There is no ultimatum. There is no wedding that never was.

Instead, there is Paul Anka. The expensive shoes that became his chew toys. His coat and its many shades of grey, proving that nothing in the world can ever be straight black and white when Paul Anka's coat says otherwise.

Chris crawled up Lorelai's body, mouthing _Lor_, _Lor_, _Lor_, all the way to her mouth. He captured it with his lips that were already pleading, his skin humming for a connection. He could taste the alcohol on her breath, and could also taste beyond it, to the flavor that was Lorelai, which he hoped would never change.

It was as though the world around them slept as rain pounded and Lorelai slid out of her clothes, Chris doing the same on his side of the backseat. Lorelai could feel no other presence as she tossed her skirt at the window and watched it slide down the glass before dropping to the floor. She picked the purple fuzz out from in between her toes after removing her Care Bear socks. She was a girl who would always cling to sock designs made for six year-olds.

She laid back then, getting as comfortable as she could in the less than spacious interior of Chris' fabulous car. "Chris?" she beckoned, her voice a slushy slur, outstretched finger curling in continuously.

"Oh yeah." His voice was husky and low, rich with lust as he lowered Lorelai until she was spread across the seats, and straddled her body from on top. As soon as he dipped down to take her lips, the world around them was lost, far away, and gone.

_I was walking, I was walking into walls.  
I'm back again, just keep walking._

Instead, there is grass. A green richer than limes in a cocktail, the scent of it dizzying, signifying when summer has come. There is snow, millions of unique snowflakes, falling to be fused together once hitting ground. Snow, in its slick form, creating ugly slush in which winter boots play slip 'n slide. And in its compact form, crunchy beneath your feet when you walk, elevated from the ground by the layers of whiteness that beg for snowmen and angels carved into the mass. There is magic in the snow, magic that now seems so far away.

Chris' touch continues to sear flesh, and yet behind her closed eyes there is nothing but green grass and white snow.

Lorelai widened her legs until she swallowed his between them. She steadied herself, gripping his shoulders, her arms snaking up behind his back. She tasted his nipple for the first time, warm and salty like a hot pretzel. "Tastes gooooood," she mumbled, as he rained kisses down her jaw and neck.

When first he inserted a finger into her wetness, she realized just how wet she could be. As she suspected, Chris was as very much a virgin as she. It could be found in the awe of his face as he teased her folds, and searched for the special nub from sex ed. That tiny g-spot that would make Lorelai buck into his groin until he had to have her, had to be inside of her.

As he searched and she drowned in the sensations of his fingers touching her _there_ and oh, _there_, Lorelai marveled at the way his organ felt against her upper thighs as it unintentionally poked or slapped her skin gently with his movements. Curiosity at its highest, she lowered a sneaky hand down between their bodies, preparing to grasp his fullness and feel its dimensions, curious about the quality of the skin.

Just as her fingers barely brushed the tip of something male on him, Chris found that nub and pinched it just so. "Oh!" Lorelai cried out, her hand immediately drawn back to join her other one in tangling into her hair. "Oh, oh!"

There is mac and cheese; Kraft Dinner from a box or Sookie's macaroni made from scratch. The eternal mystery of how real cheese could be melted on a stove and then poured onto noodles that are then baked to perfection and yet can taste no better or worse than the macaroni with the powdered cheese from the box.

_I walk into a window to see myself, and my reflection.  
When I thought about it,  
My direction,  
Going nowhere, going nowhere._

Dirty locker room talk was now to be his knowledge put to the test as Chris removed his fingers that were rubbing the swollen nub, and replaced them with his tongue. Lorelai cooed and began touching herself to compensate for feeling so much at one time but not knowing what to do with it. She caressed her breasts as if they hadn't been a part of her for years now, until Chris closed his lips around the nub and began to suck. Then she lost all control, and gave a lungful scream to penetrate the raindrops that just kept falling. The drops were falling and she was falling, along with everything around her, like in an elevator. Those ticklesome butterflies even found their way to her tummy to flutter about as she bucked up her hips, begging for more.

That was the signal Chris was waiting for, and at that, he could wait no longer. He rose to devour her mouth once again, his inexperienced hands working quite sloppily, trying to shove his enlarged member into the right hole to give them both the release that all this building tension called for. It was time to come together and explode.

_I was talking, I was talking in my sleep.  
I can stop talking.  
I'm talking to you._

She was even more wet than before, her juices making the entrance to her core a slippery thing. And his cock wasn't helping in the least, going wild and frenzied without his optimal supervision.

Finally, he tore his lips and attention away from Lorelai's face to focus on putting the puzzle pieces together. Using both hands, he shoved his cock in deep, and Lorelai gave a shocked gurgle at the invasion of her body. As her face went white with pain, he crumbled into her arms.

"Lor? Are you okay? Lorelai, I'm sorry..."

"You can't..." She had no breath; he had taken it all away. "...stop there."

"It's okay if I keep going?"

"Please..." she said faintly.

There are labels, she is aware of right now, that we go by as if they were our name. But they're nothing like our name, most of the time hardly complimentary. They describe one aspect of our entire selves, as if all our other attributes don't make sense enough to matter.

Jocks... losers...

Goths... skaters...

Chris pushed on, pumping Lorelai as if for loving information. He could suddenly sense just how muscular her thighs were as she clenched them around his waist, crossing her ankles behind his back because she said she _saw it in a movie once_. His ear remained warm from the hot breath she expelled into it with her whispered words, and he cocked his head, hoping for more action near the lobe.

Lorelai sighed loudly as a method of getting more air pumped back into her brain. She figured that at least if the experiment failed, she got to be loud. Always she was waiting for her next opportunity to make a ruckus that could embarrass her mother the way being a part of the sickeningly scripted Gilmore family embarrassed _her_.

_No one, no one is blinder.  
Who will, who will not see?  
No one, no one is blinder than me._

"Think of how everything is here, right now!" she exclaimed in an explosion of air, clenching her inner muscles around the slick moving cock. "Anything could be ours, Chris. Anything..."

She doesn't want to think about anything. Not the green grass or the white snow, Paul Anka's premature grey hair, or the way Rory's bangs are an attribute she sometimes expects to not be there. Society eats at her insides.

Nerds... stoners...

_Sluts_...

Chris couldn't believe that he was inside of her, and that he was about to leave a part of himself within her body as he made his exit. Her face was a lusty pale, a few fat hair sprayed curls and a cigarette away from resembling a '60's actress' sex pout. He ground his hips into hers, bringing forth her moan and her hands, which slapped his skin accidentally when they sought to grab hold of something that was part of him.

Slamming into her, he relished the fact that the car's hinges were groaning and complaining. Maybe they were breaking. It was a thought that at any other time would send him into a wild panic, but he was inside of her, and she was so wet and she tasted like the ocean. She was the vast oblivion of looking out at the ocean, and a future so far away it was blocked off by fog in the distance that didn't matter. Only moments mattered, like this one, when Lorelai's voice was proving that the hinges weren't the only things coming apart.

_There is another way out of here._

Chris is above her numb body, and she thinks she is going colorblind. She doesn't see blue –

- in Lorelai's eyes as he groaned, "Open them, baby. Look at me watching you. It'll turn you on like shirtless body builders."

She strains to see any shades of brown –

- that light up his eyebrows and that mat of hair beyond the litter of his hair gel. Lorelai would stab him with another of her "only John Travolta clones slosh on so much hair product when they own a penis", but her quips are so lost, gone to some recessed part of her brain that must sleep sometime when she eventually stops dreaming.

She is lost –

- "Have I found it?" he asked, pumping two more times before she squeezed so tightly that he exploded in body and sound, loving her mouth in which he helped drown her moans as she squirmed beneath him in pleasure and dizziness.

Lost –

- found.

Numb –

- tingling in the aftershocks, Lorelai held Chris to her, and they laid together, on that memorable sports car backseat.

It's so quiet, the bedroom so large, as Chris is spent, and Lorelai is without a sense of self. He kisses her on the forehead, and she squints her eyes, scrunching up her nose distastefully. She waits for him to crawl off of her, and then she rolls away, choosing to face the wall, rather than what she's just done.

_There is another way out of here  
Gonna get out, gonna get out of here._

Chris savored Lorelai's breasts afterward as she twirled a few strands of hair around her finger. "If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?" she wondered aloud.

The rain had become much softer, merely drizzling over the top of the car, showering the windows like a wet gentle breeze.

Alcohol swarmed in his stomach as he nuzzled a soft pink nipple. "I love you, baby."

Lorelai laughed uproariously, upsetting the quiet calm, like a toddler at a piano concert. "I love you, too."

"Yeah?" Chris was hopeful.

"Always, when you're drunk."

"No... Lor." He was concerned, though she smiled. He cupped her face in his hands, loving its youth and its unrivaled beauty that would not be tamed at 40, nor 80, nor the day of her death. "Love me anyway. Love me all the time."

She continued to giggle softly, as if sharing a secret with the alcohol within her. He wished she would share more of her secrets with him.

_No one, no one is blinder than me._

VIIII.

September brought Chilton architecture back into focus, along with teachers whose strive was to snap brains out of their perma-baked state. "Tenth grade this year," Lorelai said to Chris over the phone, crossing her ankles together as she lay flat on her stomach with the support of the mattress and the new pink comforter beneath her. "They're lucky I can count that high, or the confusion would start even earlier than usual."

She hemmed her own skirts, their sex appeal causing Richard's eyelids to clamp shut, and Emily's eyes to bulge out of her head. "You are not going to school looking like that, young lady."

"Not going to school? Ptuh, sounds fine to me!"

Lorelai sat down on the living room couch, spreading her legs seductively out on the length of the cushions, running slim fingers over the smoothness of her shaved legs that reached perfection. She watched Emily's face, the rage that turned her temples purple, as she contemplated whether she would ever win when it came to controlling a daughter who _would not be controlled_. It made Lorelai laugh, picturing her mother as a stick of dynamite, the fuse long enough to be lit this entire time, and yet destined to explode.

"Come on, Mom," she said, lowering her legs, and doing her part to try. "I don't live _just_ to torture you. I just want to look good."

"Fully buttoned collars and skirts that sweep past the knees encapsulate academia, Lorelai. High school isn't a fashion show."

"Wow, we are so totally from different generations." She pulled on a Cheshire cat grin. "Come on, Mom. Love me for _meee_. I can just picture you doing it. Smiling past that miniscule tug of your lips."

Emily wandered off, then, muttering something about how she'll "never understand". Whether the "she" was herself or Lorelai would be unclear for a lifetime.

Even treating the school hallways like fashion runways got old after a day or so. Lorelai began passing Chris notes between classes. He opened one during a particularly inane lecture in English class. _Feeling grumpy? Read this. Not feeling grumpy? Okay, read this. Heard you got a B on your freestyle poem last week. This I must see. Meet me at your car after school. Stand me up, and I might decide to learn how to hotwire it on a whim. -- Lorelai the Luscious_

His smiles were goofy ones when he read her loopy handwriting that couldn't ever stay within the lines. The girl wouldn't write straight to save her life. This particular note started as a curve in the center and branched out into circles that circled one another, forming a story like the inside of a tree trunk. Making it as close to impossible as she could for him to inconspicuously read "junk mail" while in an English class. He loved the way she made things difficult and complicated, with no apologies. He loved that she knew of her abilities, and was nothing if not blatantly, sometimes annoyingly proud.

She was the opposite of sane.

She was playing with the short fabric of her Tuesday skirt, the one which gave her the most _flirtatious confidence_, as he approached his car after the final school bell that afternoon. Her tiny butt was planted against the driver's side window as she smoothed out the pleats in the skirt, the specially curled tendrils of her hair fighting for dibs to brush against her cheeks as she looked down. Even parts of her own body itched to touch her. Maybe they even tingled for it as they got closer, like Chris' hands were doing now as he unclenched them from fists and left them open and ready to pull her to him. He longed, as always, to covet her softness that would contrast his solidity.

She was humming one of those girl band songs that gave him the _disgust face_, and thus he was able to approach her without her realizing by the sound of his footsteps on the asphalt. He felt like an agent, like a part of 'Magnum, P.I.': sneaky, with obvious intent as he reached out to touch a delicate bouncy curl.

Lorelai looked up, the song in her head forgotten, and he could tell by the way her mouth muscles were fighting against a smile that she was attempting to play a role. "Christopher," she acknowledged coolly.

She'd gained an inch over the summer, as well as half a cup size. These were things he knew she was very proud of, for she told them to random strangers, sometimes even when sober. Her presence was a bit more commanding, but still he saw through her; she could hide behind no facade. "Lor," he voiced like always, pulling her to him and breathing in the scent of her hair. "Haven't seen you since lunch."

"Missed me?"

He pulled back. "You know it," he kidded.

"Yeah. I'd miss me, too." She looked at the folded piece of paper he held in his hands. "So, you brought the poem?"

"I did. Though I'm not reading it."

"Uh! You tease! I can **make** you read it."

"Only if you read yours, too."

"I can quote mine from memory. It's been formulating in my head for like years, dude."

He liked the way she played games with language, with props, with his heart. Suddenly, Lorelai stole the paper from his hands, unfolded it, and ruthlessly read it to herself. She burst out laughing before she could have possibly made it halfway through.

"Chris, I didn't know you were so..."

"Yeah, yeah. Give it back."

"'I am the clay,' she mocked. 'I mold it, as I mold myself. Clay.' You know what comes next? 'I think I've gone gay.'"

Chris couldn't help but to chuckle. "I think it's too deep for your scope, babe. Metaphorical and whatnot."

"Don't tell me I don't go deep. My poem was so deep, it redefined the word." She thought a moment, her eyes rolling up into her head as she searched for the memory of the better words. "'I dug the **deepest** grave, in which to bury my slave. He was brave, but still it couldn't save... him. My grave was so deep, I jumped in it and fell asleep. It's a grave you'd like to keep, if only the price wasn't so steep. And you weren't so damn cheap.'" She nodded. "Yeah. I can do the depth thing."

"Morbid much?" Chris hooked an arm around her shoulders. He loved to claim her that way, using that action to profess to the world that she was with him. To remind himself in a macho way that she was his.

"Do not critique me without being ready for my critiques back. Your poem's earned you new author names all over the place. All right, now... PukeBrain, is it? Or was it NiftyNausea? Care to hear more of peoples' inevitable reactions?"

Chris laughed and kissed her forehead. "Retard," he said affectionately.

"Don't talk to yourself."

"You're retarded," he maintained.

"At least I have voices to talk to other than the ones in my head."

"So you say."

"Over and over again." It was both a statement and a promise.

"You're like an answering machine," Chris told her. "One that you can't always understand."

"Oh, please. All interesting women are that way. If you could understand us, what would you do with all your free time?"

"I'd find something to do."

"Or someone."

Chris coughed as something in the air got caught in his throat. "Excuse me?"

Lorelai snickered. "...Retard."

Chris sighed, hating the next words that had to come out of his mouth. "I've got to go now. Parental obligations and whatnot." He put two fingers beneath Lorelai's chin and tilted it upwards. "You going to be able to let me go?"

"What, you think that I'll just miss you and miss you forever and ever until you come back again?" Lorelai asked, her voice accusing as her finger stabbed him in the chest.

"Yes."

"You know me well."

X.

Her inner monologue invades, and she tries to keep the shouting in her head from penetrating into the world around her. _The wedding was too perfect. Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, "something" was me._

She remembers her drunken night of false glory, when she made the night be about the fact that she wouldn't be a bride, rather than the fact that Lane was. _"June thiiird, June thiiird; Red Bull gives you wiiings! Okay, moving on."_ Caught in Sookie's arms, she failed to realize that everyone was confused and far from entertained. She didn't see their frowns, or at least she couldn't define them due to everything spinning the way it was.

She is alone with a man beside her in the same bed. Her eyes are dry; there are no tears. There is nothing, because everything tangible is gone.

XI.

Her voice had a husky quality to it, deeper than her vocal chords had ever dug before. Like that grave she wrote about in September. "Remember what it was like... before we knew?"

He swallowed over lumps that kept reforming, never allowing his throat to be clear enough to speak audibly. Struggling to be heard, he spoke louder than usual. "You mean yesterday?"

"Yeah."

"I don't remember what that was like."

She shakes her head, eyelashes fluttering down to touch her cheeks. "I don't, either."

"Don't get too excited," he'd said the night before any of this came to light. Before. "That's a boa constrictor in my pants."

"Heh. Chris," said Lorelai. "That's what I was excited about. I need a practice specimen before dissection starts in science class next month."

He clasped her hand and pulled her behind the building, pinning her against the brick wall, holding her wrists hostage above her head with one of his strong hands. She didn't fight it, merely fixed him with an intense gaze in the silence as their breath made lines of condensation in the cold February air. Most of the students were long gone, and only a few of the teachers' cars remained.

"Happy Valentine's Day," Chris whispered right into her pink ear, warming it for brief seconds. And then they kissed like lovers do, having been together since the summer and beyond. The crisp air froze their noses that they rubbed together, and Lorelai giggled at kissing _like the Eskimos do_. Lorelai wanted to leave an imprint of their bodies on the brick wall, a signature, a promise that they had been there together, once, and maybe would be again.

They sat together, their backs against that wall, their bottoms frozen against the ground, looking at the thin layer of snow covering Chilton's grass. They talked for hours into the evening, bragging to one another about how many times they'd "done it", how many positions they'd attained. How high they'd place in the Sex Olympics that Lorelai would one day make a reality. And Chris almost believed her then. He did that sometimes. Became convinced because she was just so convincing.

They talked about Metallica and Megadeth, made comparisons, and invisible lists of pros and cons. Lorelai so graciously "thanked" Chris for dragging her to the premiere of 'Return of the Jedi', where Yoda's diapers were the fashion statement to avoid of the year. Where she learned "speak correctly how to". They made snow angels that were lame, due to not enough snow on the ground. Still, Lorelai's was declared the better one, which only made sense, considering she had more experience than anyone in her part of the universe.

They played rock, paper, scissors, and tic-tac-toe in the snow. Then Chris proved his manliness in the thumb wrestling portion of the night as the sun set behind his silhouette as any sun that remained was aimed directly into Lorelai's eyes. She blamed this factor on her losing streak with the thumb wars and any possible losses in the future. Her reasoning made sense to her, and that was more than enough to tide her over.

Bonding in the cold, neither one considered bailing for the day until the moon brought on new chills that tore into their expensive winter jackets. Wrapping her sparkly lilac scarf around her neck with a sexy swoop, Lorelai stood and walked with Chris to his car. Snow crunched like potato chips beneath their boots, and the silence of the night closed in on them, making them feel insignificant and small, except when it came to each other.

Chris was slow in unlocking his car door on purpose as he waited for Lorelai to speak.

"So there are those pesky benefits that you still owe me before the night's over," she reminded him with a poke in the back.

"Yeah..." he said, hiding the relief that she wasn't ready to be rid of his presence for the evening. "I'm kinda tired, though."

"Well I don't need the drugs."

"God knows you're naturally over-stimulated."

"And I don't need the rock 'n roll. I get that every morning in my shower."

Chris quirked a brow.

"But, that leaves the sex thing," Lorelai pointed out.

"That I can do."

Lorelai was grinning. "Thought you were tired."

"Never too tired for that. Not when you're wearing that skirt."

"Hmm. Why do you think I wore it?" The innocence in her voice was no longer a disarming thing.

"You've always got a plan."

"I am the master of inventing and plans, and when I decided to put the two concepts together, whew, did they ever worship me that day."

Chris leaned forward to whisper in her ear once more. "Let's find somewhere quiet so I can worship you right now."

They sat now, uncomfortable, a day later. Buried by the news splattered on a test stick that came back blue. Lorelai didn't voice the fact that suspicions had been in her mind for the last couple of weeks. Chris knew not to ask her about it. They were so silent, sitting as children on a swing set at the one empty park in Hartford.

The glorious sun was setting before their eyes as they sagged in their swinging seats, lifeless dolls, contemplating bringing another doll to life to live in their not quite real world with the toy kitchen with the easy bake oven and the food made of plastic.

Christopher shuffled his feet along the dirt on the ground, afraid of the father he would be. Knowing his tendencies to bail even before things got really hard.

Lorelai kicked her feet forward, swaying slightly in the swing, gentle strokes back and forth, letting her hair fan behind her, her brown locks wild past her vision, as everything in the past seemed to be. Wild, uncontrolled. Locked with a key thrown away. So many keys lost to the back of fate's junk closet. She didn't say anything, even to herself, but there was something in her gut telling her that she just knew, she was meant to be a mother someday. The reason for no words, however, was because anyone could gather that the day was not meant to be anywhere close to today.

Christopher finally broke the silence, when only the shuffle of feet and the tangle of metal linked bars invaded the absence of sound. He was afraid to say this, as he felt like a coward in many ways. His feet already twitched every other minute, begging to start running to a place far away from here and all that he had caused to happen.

"I was looking at you last night..." he said, voice barely audible. But he couldn't bear to speak louder while he said these words. "After we were finished, in the backseat of my car. Your hair was a mess, and you were laughing about it. Then you laughed because you said someday you were going to get _bed head_ as bad as me." She had stopped swinging and her attention was focused on him so completely, he became self conscious like the time he was forced to be in the spelling bee in the auditorium in front of his entire elementary school. "And I thought to myself, I'm going to marry that girl."

Lorelai became instantly uncomfortable, and looked down at her shoes, concentrating especially on the shoelace that was untied. She zeroed in on it, not hearing those words echo in her brain like they were being tossed back-and-forth by tennis rackets. She desired to be so Zen as she squeezed her eyes shut like a five year-old hiding in a corner, and all that she maintained was the urge to scream and then bawl as she beat her fists at the world, because it was _not supposed to be this way_. She didn't know what the right way was, but _it was not this_.

Christopher swallowed a bitter lump of sour rejection. He blinked back tears of pain. He'd always strived to be a man, and now it was time for him to become that man, ready or not. "You okay? You freaking out, Lor?"

"No, no it's fine," she said, and it amazed her how well she could lie. It amazed her, too, that he could believe her.

- -  
end


End file.
